"Avant Gardener"

House Anxiety / Marathon Artists

Artists:

One of the tags on Melbourne-based songwriter Courtney Barnett's Bandcamp page is "slacker," a term with roots in the 1890s but stronger ties to a decade about a hundred years later. Barnett's music-- like the term-- feels older, too. Building on the wordy irreverence of mid-'60s Bob Dylan and a Byrds-ian blend of psychedelia, folk and country, "Avant Gardener" tells the story of a girl dragging her underemployed ass out of bed late on a Monday morning to try her hand at gardening-- at which point she suffers a panic attack.

The scene unfolds like a dream: "Halfway down High Street, Andy looks ambivalent/ He's probably wondering what I'm doing getting in an ambulance," Barnett sings, her voice drifting through the lines in sweet speak-sing. "The paramedic thinks I'm clever 'cause I play guitar/ I think she's clever 'cause she stops people dying." They're both right. Later, the song's poor narrator struggles to get a good pull on her asthma inhaler. "I was never good at smoking bongs," she confesses. Some slacker.